


Summer of a Boy

by cgb



Category: The West Wing
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-08-16
Updated: 2002-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-19 08:06:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15505986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cgb/pseuds/cgb
Summary: "He doesn't call summer lovers and he definitely doesn't call boys but he calls Sam."





	Summer of a Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Glass Onion](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Glass_Onion), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Glass Onion’s collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/glassonion/profile).

 

Summer of a Boy

## Summer of a Boy

### by cgb
    
    
         Subject: [glass_onion] New: (TWW) Summer of a Boy (m/m) 1/1
         Date: Thursday, August 15, 2002 9:41 AM
         
         Title: Summer of a Boy
         Author: cgb ()
         Web: <http://appelsini.tripod.com/Christine>
         Category: Josh/ Sam (yeah, it surprised me too...)
         Disclaimer: I've got to be direct, you're standing on
         my neck.
         Summary: " He doesn't call summer lovers and he
         definitely doesn't call boys but he calls Sam"
         Acknowledgements: At the end.
         
         Written for a "first meeting" challenge at the Bordy.
         Sam meets Josh. Or rather Josh meets Sam.
    

* * *

So it is all about this: a night in August and he's a lot younger - young enough to take risks. On this night he is drinking a Californian red in the wrong glass and thinking that Waterman is never going to make it into the house if he can't pronounce "indigenous." 

On this night it's the launch of Senator Moyle's successful campaign and he's drinking and watching a spinning room. Here there is money and success and the smell of power and he'd appreciate it a lot more if he could make sense of it. 

The boy, because he looks like a boy, is standing at the top of the stairs with his jacket slung over his shoulder. He's dressed like a man, and he's drinking like a man, but he sways like a boy who's had too much to drink. 

Josh finds he is moving toward the boy. He is a good Samaritan, a wiser man coming to a younger man's aid, but the boy is attractive so whatever he tells himself he's doing is probably a lie, a ruse to lure his better nature where his body wants to go. 

When he gets to the boy's side he says, "are you all right?" without receiving an answer. Instead the boy stares at Josh, his eyes looking past him, looking through him, and then he's taking Josh's arm and steering him out - out past the glittering arrivals waving to people in the crowd, out past the waiters with trays of glasses and hors d'oeuvres, out into the night, out into the open. 

Up close the boy is not so young. His shoulders are broad and he has cufflinks in his sleeves. 

He says, he is going to be sick. 

The boy lets go of his arm and vomits in the rose bushes. Josh says, "wait here" and disappears inside returning moments later with water in his glass and a blue paper napkin. 

Later when they stop a taxi, the boy turns to him and says, "I'm Sam" and this is how it begins. 

Josh says, "you don't look old enough to be drunk at a Senator's party." 

Sam says, "I'm twenty-four." 

Sam has a place that's larger than his only it isn't his: it belongs to a friend of his father's or his mother's because he's not really paying attention. 

He's thinking that this is what people who pick people up do and he's thinking that he should probably have an escape plan because this never ends well for him. 

Sam gives him a glass of water and they kiss with Sam's back against the wall in the kitchen. 

There's a lover for every season under heaven, Josh thinks, which is why Michelle left him in April and Sam is a warm Indian summer in a room with a creaking fan attached to the ceiling, ice trailing down his skin leaving a searing trail. Sam tastes like sweat and sun and salty air. 

Sam is behind him, his fingers at Josh's throat, his hips against Josh's buttocks and his breath in his ear. "Say 'please'," he says. 

"Please." 

* * *

Sam is a lover that leaves him alone in the morning with the smell of sex on the sheets and expensive aftershave wafting from the bathroom. 

And a note. It says, "call me" and there is a number. He doesn't call summer lovers and he definitely doesn't call boys but he calls Sam because he can't forget him and there are bits of him scattered in Josh's imagination that he can't piece together. 

And he tells himself this is Washington, and he needs allies rather than enemies, and he tells himself he's calling because he never found out what Sam was doing at Moyle's party. 

And maybe the lies know better than he does because Sam becomes his ally and his friend and his co-worker, but never his lover. Never again. 

* * *

Lovers come and go and they leave a trail of dry musings in bars over the meaning of life and love and sex as a dangerous weapon and he thinks that if this is all there is, then he could start and finish the story on the same page and not think about epilogues and sequels. 

Lovers come and go but Sam is a friend and friends are like driftwood, always washing back on the shore, so it's this story that runs into volumes. He's building a series on Sam. 

* * *

He is waiting for Sam as Sam finds his keys and they spill into a summer night in the capital. Sam's in a funk and Josh tries to alleviate his mood. Josh jokes, parodies Ritchie, makes fun of Toby, and tries his best but he considers that it's only twice in his life that he's really made Sam happy, and both times when he thinks about it, Sam deserved most of the credit. 

And now he's seeing Sam to his car and waving goodbye and going home to his girlfriend while Sam, his summer lover, goes home alone. 

It starts with a boy. It ends here. 

Fin 

* * *

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my very lovely wife, Teanna. Darling, I'm nothing without you. 

cgb 

"Why do I feel like I'm in a women behind bars movie?" - Samantha Carter 

* * *

If you enjoyed this story, please send feedback to cgb


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